Oct 16th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Plumber Licensing
It seems that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber,” may not be a licensed plumber. Which to me once again raises the issue of whether or not it really serves the public interest to have so many occupational licensing rules. Like most people, if I needed to hire a plumber, I’d probably look for a recommendation. I don’t have any real confidence that these licensing schemes are tracking quality in any meaningful way, just preventing a certain number of people from earning a living and raising the general cost of plumbing services for everyone else.
126 Responses to “Plumber Licensing”
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October 16th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
It’s pretty surreal how huge the whole “Joe the Plumber” issue has become. Let’s remember that the terrifying prospect that we’re facing here is that *if* this guy does manage to start earning more than 98.5% of the American population, then Obama might reduce his after-tax income by 1.5-1.7%. This is what McCain is laying awake at night worrying about?
October 16th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
The problem is that when you don’t have any licensing for skilled positions you have a glut of weekend warriors who drive the price down and put professionals out of business– and that eventually lowers quality. I knew a guy who had his own landscaping business but gave it up because there were too many people with a John Deere who would do stuff for absurdly low rates because it was only a hobby for them. When it came to doing actually skilled work, of course, they sucked at it– but people want to believe they can get quality work without paying for it. So they go with an unskilled cheap guy and the actual professional suffers.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I’m searching for a non license proctologist for my up coming colonoscopy. I hear it can save me a bundle.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Licensing should be able safety. You should be able to have confidence that the people you employ as tradesmen should at least be able to do the job competently enough not to turn your home into a death trap. I agree that licensing should not be a way to turn a profession into a closed shop, but there is a reasonable argument for some regulation.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
matt - it’s nice to know that you are concerned about people earning a living wage. a licensed plumber in Oregon is registered with the state, is bonded, has liability insurance, has to pay his people a fair wage, and has to cover them with workman’s compensation insurance. The argument of preventing a certain number of people from earning a living wage and raising the cost of plumbing is often sounded by right wing republicans when they assail unions, and union members. In reality unlicensed plumbers tear down the living wage.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
What about requirements that may be covered when one is licensed by a city or county government agency - such as business insurance, KNOWLEDGE (tests are required sometimes), union affiliations (knowledge again), not to mention unlicensed work may be a potential problem down the road when you go to sell the house. A buyer may want to see your permit for the work, and an unlicensed contractor won’t be providing you with one of those, probably.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
The problem with “de-regulating” these industries is that the consequences of inept, dangerous, and shoddy work is not as trivial as you suggest. If your plumber screws up fixing your toilet that is a low-cost failure, but if your plumber screws up the routing of the sewage when you are building a home the cost can be extreme and the impact can extend beyond your own home. Do you want to learn five years from now that the guy who wired up the electrical system in your home was carrying around a copy of “wiring for dummies” while doing the work?
It is easy for people whose skill set is ill-defined and based upon experiences and qualities that cannot really be tested or quantified (like say “pundit” or “Senior Editor at the Center for American Progress Action Fund”) to assume that everyone else is as equally replaceable as they are, but sometimes even a casual examination of the issue shows this to be incorrect.
Do you want your radiologist to be some guy who scored well on his MCATs and thinks that everything is fine as long as there is a board-certified radiologist working somewhere in the hospital whose license to practice medicine he can “work under”?
October 16th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Oh, I get to post this again:
Remember when Democrats were pissed off when people dug into the poster family for SCHIP from Maryland?
Those were the days.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I’m not sure how the licensing of plumbers is carried out, but it’s plainly skilled work that if done badly can have appalling consequences (the contractor on my sister’s house installed the wrong kind of pipes for her purpose that leaked all over), and licensing is not inappropriate if done fairly.
But I’ve got an instinct about “Joe.” My guess is that he’s a small time contractor, and I’ve read that he’s a member of a non-union builder’s group. My further guess is that, if he hires people in this work, a cursory investigation would soon show that a good number of them were undocumented. Just a guess of course.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
This really doesn’t seem to match the level of insight I’ve come to expect here. I should think that a licensing requirement is intended to guarantee that plumbers (or at least those who employ & supervise them) have some degree of actual knowledge about plumbing. There are pretty significant risks to having incompetents do some kinds of work, and a license would imply to me that the licensee (A) has some kind of qualification and (B) can be made to take responsibility for the consequences if my home is unexpectedly filled with sewage as a result of error.
This is regulation at a pretty basic level–and while leftist opinions don’t require us to love all regulations, it certainly behooves us to consider whether they serve any useful purpose rather than dismissing them out of hand. Recommendations are a fine supplement, but not much help if you’re getting them from someone who’s completely satisfied with work done a week ago that will catastrophically fail in two years.
Of course it’s possible for a licensing program to fail utterly in fostering competence of responsibility, but that doesn’t invalidate the concept any more than the performance of Michael Brown invalidates the existence of FEMA.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
“competence of responsibility”; -f, +r. Dang.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Remember when Democrats were pissed off when people dug into the poster family for SCHIP from Maryland?
You mean because Michelle Malkin was harassing a twelve-year-old?
October 16th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
evgen, that’d be a lot more convincing if there was some evidence that these licensing regimes actually do a good job of regulating competence. It’s not clear that they do. Even in medicine, we’ve got malpractice all over the place.
As for contractors…. please.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
In reality unlicensed plumbers tear down the living wage.
In reality the surfeit of job barriers (”professional certifications”) hurts working people by denying them access to well-paying jobs, and hurts them yet again by artificially increasing the cost of living. By all means we should enforce strict standards for airline pilots, say, or nuclear power plant engineers. But you ought to be able to hire your jack-of-all-trades-but-happens-to-be unlicensed friend Bob for plumbing repairs.
You should be able to have confidence that the people you employ as tradesmen should at least be able to do the job competently enough not to turn your home into a death trap.
You should be able to have that confidence if the tradesman you hire belongs to a trade group with tough membership or certification standards, or if you’ve heard about his good work from numerous friends or associates. It’s not necessary for the government to be in the business of certifying tradespeople, especially if, as Matt writes, the effect is to raise prices and deny entry to certain types of employment.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
“licensing scheme”?
You make it sound like a cabal of plumbers are plotting against you. What other schemes are you suspicious of - doctors, lawyers, drivers, hunters?
October 16th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Have to agree with many of the comments who have disagreed with you. Though I agree that a lot of professions are over-regulated and shouldn’t require licensing (hair stylists and massage professionals come to mind), plumbing doesn’t fall into that category. Bad plumbing can cause health issues as well as screw up structural integrity of buildings. Not sure about other states, but at least in Illinois, a licensed plumber needs to know the legal ins and outs of building codes and the like, and as a former owner of a 100+ year old apartment building, I can’t tell you how helpful knowledge like that can be, especially when it comes to making repairs cheaply but still with code that will pass inspection. Perhaps hiring a plumber with knowledge like that was my responsibility as someone who was supposed to maintain the building, but as somebody who is now renting again, I’m sure glad that the plumbers out there who are licensed have been tested to ensure they know what they are doing and not doing stuff to my pipes that might make me ill.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
“Joe the Plumber” is actually a character played by actor Michael Chiklis in his new TV series, “The Pipe.”
October 16th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Certification prevents me from having to deal with “unlicensed joe the plumber” hired by my condo maintenance group. I don’t get to choose who these @#$$% bring in, but I have to live with the consequences. Additionally Certification allows new plumbers to actually get business as they passed the exam at least.
Deregulating this stuff just allows developers, contractors and others to hire cheap, untrained guys instead of a professional.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I think I would want to know that my plumber were properly insured … I don’t think I’m interested in suing him when my house floods, only to find out that there’s no way for me to recover. Or, more properly, my homeowners’ insurance company probably wants to make sure my plumber is insured.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I know we’d all like to think that plumbing is no big deal, but the advent of sanitary plumbing coupled with a clean water supply (just more plumbing really) has an awful lot to do with the absence of third world style diseases in most of the civilized world. And don’t get me started about how critical it is that gas lines be run correctly, vent pipes for boilers & hot water heaters be ducted appropriately and the list goes on.
It is perfectly reasonable to have licensed plumbers as it is for electricians and other technical trades. Seems to me Joe the non-plumber (matched by his non-independent status it seems) just wants to bypass the hard work, perseverance and investment required to gain a license
October 16th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Re: people want to believe they can get quality work without paying for it.
Or else they don’t care about quality. I can see that being the case with yard work: as long as someone doesn’t run the law mower over your prize petunias you don’t need an A-List landscape guy and you should be able to get stuff done cheap (although I admit I’m in the “Cut your own damn grass” club in regards to anyone who is physically able to do those sorts of chores).
October 16th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Matt,
C’mon, seriously? You don’t see the value in 1) knowing the person you employ is a skilled tradesmen, with a learned skill and 2) helping them earn a proper wage for their service.
I’m guessing you don’t know anyone who is a plumber, and have never really done any plumbing yourself. I appreciate your blog, but sometimes you spout of with this sort of market ideology nonsence about things you no nothing about. Kinda weak.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
This really doesn’t seem to match the level of insight I’ve come to expect here.
It’s called sarcasm, or as my elite English professor friend insist, irony.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Where do you draw the line? Unlicensed plumbers are okay because, hey…how much trouble can they cause? What about electricians? Do you want a minimum knowledge base for the guy installing your new wiring?
How about your neurosurgeon? You want anyone able to set up shop with a scalpel?
Licensing is about ensuring minimum standards of knowledge in the profession. By definition, 50% of all licensed professionals will be in the bottom half of their profession. They set a floor, they don’t guarantee anything.
As an aside, now that you’re a homeowner and have to deal with finding good skilled tradesmen, it’ll be interesting to see if your opinion on this changes any.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Freemti,
I would think that the absence of third world diseases has more to do with chlorination than plumbing. You can live perfectly well off water from a well or a town pump, if you disinfect it properly.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Alan, I will grant you the fact that licensing does not completely eliminate incompetence and poor performance but it does serve to set an expected floor on the level of incompetence you will encounter.
Of course, we could always outsource these ratings and assurance-checking to third-parties. That worked out just swell over the past few years for financial instruments…
(As something of an aside, but why is it that Underwriters Laboratories and Consumers Union (aka “Consumers Reports”) seem to be the only non-governmental rating agencies that have not become captured interests of the parties they are rating? )
October 16th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I am pwned like crazy.
But on the original subject: I thought Joe to be an employee who wants to buy a business rather than being currently a business owner. If he plans to borrow money to buy a business with multiple employees, run the operation through his personal finances, and immediately start clearing a quarter mil in annual taxable personal income after deductions, then either he’s being pretty unrealistic or I should be kicking myself daily for not going into plumbing.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
But you ought to be able to hire your jack-of-all-trades-but-happens-to-be unlicensed friend Bob for plumbing repairs.
I don’t understand what makes you think you can’t. I replaced a drain disposal in my mother-in-law’s kitchen last Christmas, because none of them knew how to do it (not a really hands-on family) and they were about to pay triple for a plumber to come over and do it on Christmas eve.
I’m certainly not a licensed plumber, but I know that shit flows downhill and it was easy enough to follow the instructions. I suppose I wasn’t “paid” for it, but in all the states I’ve ever lived you can do whatever plumbing you want, you’ll need to follow code if you want to keep your building permit (and obviously if you cock it up, you’ve got no insurance or bonding to cover the damages.)
It’s not like your buddy Bob is going to jail for “plumbing without a license.”
October 16th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Here in New York State, licensing for Plumbers was made mandatory in 1870. For Architects, the date was 1900. The reason for this 30 year gap is due to the fact that plumbing (leaving out various Roman and Chinese efforts) is a relatively new technology that when first implemented on a large scale in the 19th century was the cause of many floods and blow-outs. To this day, the New York City Department of Buildings is far more interested in how you vent your plumbing stacks and how many fixtures are on each line, rather than how you propose to install electricity in a building or ensuring that a space is adequately lighted. While there once may have been good reasons to insist on licensing plumbers, it is common knowledge that owning a plumbing business is far more lucrative than being a Architect!
October 16th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Jesus, Matt, what a stupid, callow comment — one that is completely ignorant and dismissive of what it means to perform the work of a skilled tradesmen.
I would think even a trust fund scumbag such as yourself would have some sense of the public interst in having properly trained and licensed individuals carrying out tasks that have a direct effect on public health and safety.
I shake my fucking head. Maybe my Dad was right all along about Harvard.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
What I want to know, if it’s not intruding too much into this innocent’s private life, is whether he is really Charles Keating’s grandson
October 16th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
@ Hector
Plumbing is not just for water coming in. It’s also used to dispose of waste water. I doubt you would want to live in a town that didn’t have a sewage system.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Charles Keating once came to speak to my law school class on White Collar Crime. After his stint in the joint, he seemed genuinely sympathetic to the plight of prisoners.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
hector, which makes my point exactly. sterilization by chlorine and the safe transport of potable water to your tap is just one part of a safe and sanitary plumbing system. I could get out my copy of the standard plumbing code and quote you chapter and verses about all the myriad of rules about slope, air gaps, minumum distances etc… - trust me, the book is quite large. The story doesn’t just stop at your tap, keeping dirty water away from potable, handling potential seepage of sewer gas back into your house and venting of same, anti scalding valves are just more examples. Plumbing is way more than just fixing a leaky faucet, a task that we all can agree is probably do-able by anyone with a modicum of skills
October 16th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
It’s almost as if you have the attitude - oh, it’s blue collar. ANYONE could do that!
October 16th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Licensing/certification is a fairly hot issue in the software writing biz. The IEEE Computer Society wants to move in the direction of licensing but there is great resistance among the players that pay people to write software, not to mention those people who write software but don’t do a good job at it (a fairly sizable group).
IMO, If we leave it up to the Market, there will never be licensed software developers or at best they will be a tiny segment of employed developers.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Occupational licensing requirements are not there to guarantee quality, they are there to create a barrier to entry so people already in the profession can make more money.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
What the Hell? I might as well pile on also. I’m an amateur fix it kind of guy & usually do my own plumbing, electrical, carpentry, car repair, etc. Yes, it would be nice to be able to make a living at such tinkering around, but the bottom line is, I am not a pro at any of this stuff. Sometimes I’ve screwed up pretty badly. It’s one thing for me to do my own work or help a friend & mess up, but another thing entirely when working for strangers. When a job is beyond my knowledge or capabilities, at least I know the guy I’m hiring has to prove a minimum competency in his/her trade if e/he has a license & I have recourse if they screw up.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Matt, this is about the dumbest thing you’ve ever written.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
The state licenses plumbers and other professionals like me for the same reason it regulates weights and measures. It serves both the interests of consumers and merchants if everyone knows objectively what something being sold as a one-pound bag of rice contains.
Similarly, it benefits both buyers and sellers of professional skills if there is some established standard as to the minimum training and skills possessed by someone calling themselves a “plumber” or a “doctor” or a “lawyer” or a “barber.”
October 16th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
It is absolutely in the public interest to have “so many occupational licensing rules.”
You should watch Holmes on Homes. I know it’s in Canada, but seriously. People lie about recommendations. Worse, it’s a financial and safety issue.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Say it ain’t so! Joe LIED to Obama! He made up the whole premise of his question and certainly didn’t say it was a hypothetical.
He has no prospect of owning the plumbing business, and in 2006, he only made $40,000, so he’ll get a tax cut under Obama.
He should take his own advice and find out more about the candidates rather than wasting everyone’s time with Republican talking points about the Iraq War (on MSNBC) and weird comments about Sammy Davis Jr. tap dancing when Obama did indeed answer his question very directly (to Katie Couric on CBS).
October 16th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Yglesias let me know how things are going after your “plumber” installs your system and it does not carry away the waste and you find it in your living room. Oh ya all those regulations on Wall Street just caused things to cost more. So now that we don’t have them things are much better! You have just proved that you are a waste of space.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
In Washington professionals are required to be bonded or insured (and some are required to be certified). If the plumber destroys your house then you can sue them. Their insurance might pay your claim or if you win the suit and they refuse to pay you directly then you can claim their bond. The state also maintains a database so you can find out if there are any outstanding claims against the professional.
I personally look up every company who I hire to do work on my house. At minimum I know that they are insured, bonded, and I can see if there are lots of recent complaints. I think it is in the public interest that the state maintains this information and makes these requirements of professionals who can severely mess up your property if they don’t know what they’re doing.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
There’s also an immigration overlay to the licensing rules - undocumented people cannot get licenses. If an undocumented person then does plumbing work and the homeowner refuses to pay, the undocumented plumber may not sue the homeowner for payment because he is unlicensed and only licensed contractors can sue for unpaid wages. Whether you think this effect is good or bad depends a lot on how you think about immigration laws - I’ve seen a lot of decent people doing hard work get screwed out of legitimately earned wages by homeowners who know how to game the system this way.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Here’s the entire scoop on Joe the Plumber from his hometown newspaper:
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081016/NEWS09/810160418
He’s clearly just a conservative republican partisan who’s loving basking in the attention, even though he’s totally uninformed. His whole deal comes down to “I don’t believe what Obama is saying” which is fine but hardly worthy of constant MSM attention.
P.S. Note Katie Couric’s guffaw when he made the Sammy Davis Jr. comment. Average Joes are hilarious, huh Katie!
October 16th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I don’t have any real confidence that these licensing schemes are tracking quality in any meaningful way, just preventing a certain number of people from earning a living and raising the general cost of plumbing services for everyone else.
Isn’t Joe the Plumber famous solely and entirely for asking why he should have to pay taxes at a higher rate on a $250,000 income?
I should have such trouble earning a living.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Holy crap are you wrong on this one. I think you made a horrendously hasty conclusion there.
I mean think about it, why should an electrician need a license?
And holy cow, you’re displaying incredible ignorance of union trades and how apprenticeships work.
Oh Matthew, where did we go wrong? ;o)
October 16th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Matt is absolutely right.
You don’t need the state to be involved in licensing, that’s just a sure way to create bad incentives and corruption.
Let private guilds take care of the quality of its members and let the state take care of inspections (ultimately; let engineers and architects privately hired by the builder take care of on site inspection and QC). If a company can’t get accepted by a guild and sometimes fails to get the work approved, don’t use it. If a company can’t show it’s insured, don’t use it.
Except for a few very specific jobs in building, like joining to the public sewage system and structural engineering, licensing is not needed in the building trades. It’s just a racket.
/Limagolf
P.S. I’m an architect.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
The point here is not how the license is acquired so much as the circumstances under which it may be revoked
If a licensed plumber is found doing shoddy work that does not pass inspection or fails to get a permit when one is required for a job and there is a complaint, that can cost them their license.
It is all part of the protections provided by building inspection services which exist to make sure that home owners are not ripped off by contractors - whether the contractors they hired themselves or contractors hired by earlier owners.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
I should add that I’ve always been white collar and that is no excuse for not appreciating the work that goes into being a skilled, licensed tradesman.
This is as bad a post as Kos’ post a long time ago ranting about Pilots/Airlines having unions. That was a Doozy too.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I would find these anti-licensing posts more convincing if they were about lawyers and accountants.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
An unskilled plumber could cause big $$$$ damage to a house. But hey, saving a few bucks is more important I guess. Who cares if plumbers make enough to earn a living wage, they can always work two jobs. Screw sharing my wealth. As we’ve all been reassured of late, the free market is always best right Matt?
October 16th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Most licensing requirement bar you from engaging in the work as a trade. In other words you can fix your own plumbing. And no one is going to go after your mother in law if add an outdoor tap for her. But things like plumbing or wiring have many many considerations to be taken into account. Many other licensed trades that you want to be licensed too. Hair stylist was brought up. You want your hair stylist to be licensed. You want your manicurist to be licensed too. Lots and lots of things that can go wrong in a barber shop or a beauty parlor that can make you sick, that the state holding licensing requirements over an operators head help keep under control.
…. and we all know why the state licenses massage therapists don’t we? There were far too many people, mostly young women, who were um um relieving stress. Nowadays they are busy escorting people, mostly men.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Fail.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Though I agree that a lot of professions are over-regulated and shouldn’t require licensing (hair stylists … come to mind)
Let me guess, you’re a middle-aged,balding dude.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
This is silly: there are a *ton* of regulations that apply to things like drain installation, water heater venting, what types of fittings to use and why, that are all rooted in safety. At least if the guy is licensed, he’s proven he’s aware of all of these issues. An unlicensed plumber can make a standard ton of mistakes (ask anyone who’s worked on restoring a house).
Why don’t we have an unlicensed, unregulated market that speculates upon mortgage securities while we’re at it…
October 16th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Why stop with de-licensing plumbers? Why not de-license contractors and electricians as well? What about lawyers? Dentists? Doctors?
October 16th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Is this what it is going to be like for the next 3 weeks? McCain trotting out Joe the Plumber around the country talking about Obama’s plan to take money away from poor folks like Joe who’s making more than 250K? And people here arguing about plumber licensing and deregulation of the plumbing industry/sector/skill/whatever you call it?
October 16th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I disagree completely. Plumbers do need to know what they are doing, especially when they are laying pipe in places that will be relatively inaccessible (like foundations). And the nature of many plumbing repairs is such that you generally don’t have time to check references—you really need to know that your plumber is qualified to diagnose and do the job. I don’t know how you do that without without a licensing body.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
When I thought this guy’s 15 minutes of fame couldn’t get any worse, it does.
Now for the big question: who’s less bright — McCain or Joe the not-quite-a-plumber?
October 16th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
One side of this is that licensed and certified plumbers must carry liability insurance. If something goes wrong, or if the plumber gets hurt on the job — then the consumer has some security.
Taxpayers (people not involved in the transaction) also have some coverage in a sense, because if the plumber gets hurt they don’t immediately need to fall back on the social safety net.
This might not be an issue if a plumber is replacing a leaking toilet valve, but on bigger jobs consumers are taking on some risk with an unlicensed plumber, the plumbers are taking on risk, and if something goes wrong the cost ends up being dumped on everyone else. The risk – just like the case with our stock market – is socialized and deferred in the case of a profession without some certification process.
When screw ups happen they’re likely to be costly (and they’re likely to be more frequent if a person doesn’t have professional training).
Part of the purpose behind these trade organizations — whether we’re talking about lawyers, real estate agents, accountants, plumbers, or electricians — is also to ensure that a person can practice a trade and make a living out of the trade.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
This isn’t about who you’d hire as a plumber. This is about “Joe” misrepresenting who he is and, by extension, McCain lying on national TV. And he owes thousands in back taxes… And he’s a registered Republican who voted for McCain in the primary…
http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/
October 16th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Matt, plumbers don’t just hook up your toilet (though a water leak is bad enough)– a licensed plumber will also run black steel piping in your house to connect your stove and clothes dryer to the utility’s gas line.
Having done renovations on a pretty run down house in Westchester, I have to say that I’m glad we hired a licensed plumber to run the gas lines. You don’t want an uncredentialed amateur to blow your house up, or to explain to your insurance company who did the work.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
There may be a strong case for mandatory licensing for major kinds of plumbing installation and repair work, but the vast majority of plumbing tasks are not like that. They’re things like fixing a leak in a pipe or installing a new disposal. They don’t require special skills or training or in-depth knowledge. They’re just messy, unpleasant, menial jobs that a lot of people would rather hire someone else to do than do themselves. There’s no serious case for requiring commercial plumbers to have a government license to perform most kinds of ordinary residential plumbing work.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Epic fucking fail. Cowboy journalists aren’t installing your septic tank.
(You can go to an elite university and come from a family background in the skilled trades, though I think Harvard is less conducive to such things.)
Some of this, though, comes down to the ridiculously broad definition of the middle class in the US. Actual plumbers, sparkies, chippies and brickies, even successful ones, are working class. Their gaffers are on the cusp between working-class and middle-class, depending on how much time they sit in an office or the works van drinking tea.
The political discussion of skilled trades as a sector of the job market is completely lacking in this country. It’s been supplanted by the bizarre cultural construction of ‘blue collar’, which usually involves white men with moustaches.
The other part of it, though — Joe T. Plumber is basically saying that Obama’s going to tax him in a hypothetical future a long way away. The argument that it’s ‘taxing ambition’ rings a bit hollow when you have people just above the median income acting as if they’ll up with the top 5% Real Soon Now. Ambition’s fine, but make the fucking money first, and worry about the tax liability later. That’s what (certified) accountants are for.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I’m sure it’s just terminology, but if you have a leaky faucet you might hire a “handyman” to fix it. As a general rule I figure if I can turn off the supply valve then I can do it myself, or get a handyman to do it. If it’s inside the wall, under the floor, or an exterior faucet, then I have a plumber do it. Certainly, the plumber we had use a backhoe to replace our sewer line was insured, bonded, and certified!
October 16th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
“But you ought to be able to hire your jack-of-all-trades-but-happens-to-be unlicensed friend Bob for plumbing repairs.”
Um you can.
I’ll just echo something written above, that is, not everything is as bullshit easy as blogging and so credentialing in some cases may be desirable.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Jesus, Matt can be really, really, fucking stupid sometimes, huh?
October 16th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
I guess I’m terribly naive. I thought every plumber had to be both licensed in the trade and a union member. I’m…a little concerned that’s not the case. How do you know if someone’s a good plumber, or at least minimally competent?
October 16th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Ya gotta love it. If Matt wanted to hire a plumber, he would look for a recommendation. Y’know, maybe something like the guy being licensed.
Having had a not-licensed plumber foisted off on me once by a bad plumbing company, I can tell you this is important. Waking up at three in the morning with the sound of rushing water and two inches of sewage flooding your bedroom will give you a whole new perspective on this.
Frankly, I get damn tired of this libertarian b-s Matt brings from his living room lifestyle. Plumbers work hard. Their hands get worn out from handling cold pipes and their knees and feet get broken down from kneeling on concrete floors. They’re expected to produce work you can cover with drywall and forget about for 50 years. And the liberals like Matt have left it up to the plumbers to provide for their old age and health care and OTJ safety. If the plumbers can get all that right most of the time, paying a little extra for one who’s qualified seems pretty reasonable to me.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Exactly, which is why the “barrier” of licensing minimum knowledge is not onerous in the least.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
“In reality unlicensed plumbers tear down the living wage.”
In reality i just farted.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
The point of having professional licenses is to have something to take away when someone does really shitty work.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
catowner,
Ya gotta love it. If Matt wanted to hire a plumber, he would look for a recommendation. Y’know, maybe something like the guy being licensed.
No, not like the guy being licensed. He explicitly said he has no real confidence that licensing tracks quality. I share his skepticism. In any case, licensing obviously doesn’t have to be done by the government. It can be private and voluntary.
lobsta,
Exactly, which is why the “barrier” of licensing minimum knowledge is not onerous in the least.
Huh? How does that follow?
October 16th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
It’s amazing to see how many people in this thread are uninterested in saving the general public money and instead think it’s imperative that we protect the plumber industry. If you suck at plumbing, you won’t get hired. If you’re a good plumber but you charge too much, you won’t get hired either. This is about as basic an example of an equilibrium that a market can solve, and if you don’t think that an open market gets the best result here, i don’t see how you can ever support an open market.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
If you suck at plumbing, you won’t get hired.
Yeah. If you suck at plumbing, you’ll probably be only able to do bad work for as long as you can find rubes willing to pay for it–which might be quite a long while if you’re good at marketing yourself.
Of course, it sucks to be the people whose houses you ruined with your incompetence, but that’s the way the free market works. They can always sue you or something. After all, it’s easier to work these things out in court than to simply legally require plumbers to possess some baseline level of competence, right?
October 16th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
What’s operative seems to be that someone with a little cash on his hands, interested in investing in a plumbing concern, wants all at once to imagine he’s earning in the top 5 percent, imagine that Obama’s tax plan is slanted against him and ordinary Americans, and imagine that he’s a plumber and thus working class. I have no knowledge or opinion about professional credentials, but if this once it stops the usual GOP scam of passing off capitalists as average joe populists, why in heck is Matt complaining?
October 16th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I don’t think doctors should be licensed either. The all-knowing market will eventually catch up with charlatans, who will have to have to drop their prices until only desperate, low-income losers and retirees will hire them.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
James Gary,
Yeah. If you suck at plumbing, you’ll probably be only able to do bad work for as long as you can find rubes willing to pay for it–which might be quite a long while
Or, it might not. Of course, a plumbing license is no guarantee of good work. It may not be a meaningful indicator of the likely quality of the work at all, which is Matthew’s point. It seems rather unlikely that plumbers are somehow specially shielded from the effects of market forces that reward good work and punish bad. In fact, I suspect plumbers are probably particularly dependent on their work record and personal recommendations from friends and neighbors to support their business.
Of course, it sucks to be the people whose houses you ruined with your incompetence, but that’s the way the free market works.
Wow, so doing a sucky job of fixing a leaky faucet will “ruin” a house. Who knew?
October 16th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
ronathan
It’s amazing to see how many people in this thread are uninterested in saving the general public money and instead think it’s imperative that we protect the plumber industry. If you suck at plumbing, you won’t get hired.
This is right wing fantasy talk. People who suck at their job get hired all the time in all fields.
Mixner:
No, not like the guy being licensed. He explicitly said he has no real confidence that licensing tracks quality. I share his skepticism. In any case, licensing obviously doesn’t have to be done by the government. It can be private and voluntary.
The act of licensing doesn’t maintain quality. The test should actually be fairly simple and easy to pass. The point is that a licensed plumber should have to maintain any required insurance and bonding when taking jobs, and if the job goes wrong, the person who hired them should have financial recourse. What will guarantee quality is that poor plumbers wont be able to maintain a license and or reasonable insurance, while good ones will be able too.
owenz
The point of having professional licenses is to have something to take away when someone does really shitty work.
And thats it exactly. Bad plumbing can be a multi-year disaster that can substantially damage property and pose a risk to the inhabitants of any building. You dont want it to keep people from entering the business, but to be able to force the bad ones out.
Matt puts forth a pretty standard republican view on this issue, that regulation can be bad, so we should do away with all regulation. Now regulation CAN be bad, but the answer is to improve it by trimming or redesigning the innefective or counterproductive aspects, not by seeking to blindly eliminate it.
Its cutting blindly without understanding the consequences that got us into the economic mess we are in.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
We must obviously license anyone who does any kind of plumbing, electrical, construction, flooring, painting decorating, or gardening work at all. Even homeowners doing it for themselves. Not to mention the local handyman who takes care of the house for his elderly neighbor for free. The government must protect people from themselves! We need licenses for everything and everyone!
October 16th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Some basic licensing requirements make sense, but too often the barriers to entry for many professions are designed to diminish competition. That is the point Matt is making, not the strawman argument so many commenters seem to be deriding. Of course no one wants any Joe-shmoe doing their plumbing, but people should be able to make some price distinction depending on the type of plumbing job they need done. Not every task requires extensive training or experience. Obviously, for big jobs people will want to have a more highly skilled and experienced plumber. A web site hosted by the licensing agency (together with a hotline for the internet-phobic) showing years of experience, certified competencies, whether the person is insured and any filed complaints would be appropriate, and would let consumers make an informed choice. Anything over and above that degenerates into unfair trade restrictions.
I believe in the government’s role in protecting us, but it’s important as liberals that we not drink the Kool-Aid and start claiming that every regulation makes sense. Freedom to work is an important freedom that should be protected.
As for white collar jobs, I totally agree that those are overregulated as well. I used to be a lawyer - I graduated from Stanford Law School and worked at several big firms before deciding that legal life was not for me. I can tell you that what you learn in law school has little to do with the actual practice of law. The requirement that people must spend three years in law school to get a JD before even applying to take a bar exam (which is of questionable value itself) is pointless. An apprenticeship system like exists in certain other countries would far better prepare future lawyers for managing their own cases and matters and would not subject them to mountains of debt.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
The ability to pass a “fairly simple and easy” test once every year or two is completely meaningless. It doesn’t tell you anything about the kind of work to expect. If I’m choosing a plumber, I’m going to look for a track record of satisfied customers, recommendations from people I know, and a clean record at the Better Business Bureau. Demanding that plumbers have a “license” is waste of time.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Wow Mathew, you really missed this one. Do you think that somehow everyone has access to a network of people who can provide good plumber recommendations? Do you want a plumber with no objective criteria relative to competence? Do you want him to be ignorant of the building codes or his legal obligations? Tisk, tisk, fellow. Not a well taken stand.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
We must obviously license anyone who does any kind of plumbing, electrical, construction, flooring, painting decorating, or gardening work at all. Even homeowners doing it for themselves. Not to mention the local handyman who takes care of the house for his elderly neighbor for free. The government must protect people from themselves! We need licenses for everything and everyone!
Over-regulation is no argument for under-regulation. But this is the attitude republicans have held, and look where it got us today with our financial system?
The ability to pass a “fairly simple and easy” test once every year or two is completely meaningless. It doesn’t tell you anything about the kind of work to expect. If I’m choosing a plumber, I’m going to look for a track record of satisfied customers, recommendations from people I know, and a clean record at the Better Business Bureau. Demanding that plumbers have a “license” is waste of time.
Thats pretty exacting. Or you know you could go to a licensed plumber. If they dont have those things, and the regulations were well written, youd know they would have to have those things to actually have that license. Much cleaner and simpler.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Matt,
a post on the Smith dinner is needed. Go to the videotape!
McCain was pretty funny. Really funny to be honest.
Obama was less so, but was good, and stuck the shiv in well at the end.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Do you think that somehow everyone has access to a network of people who can provide good plumber recommendations?
Not “everyone” exactly, but almost everyone. The internet provides instant access to recommendations and complaints regarding plumbers and other local service providers from essentially the entire population of your community.
Do you want a plumber with no objective criteria relative to competence?
As others have noted, a good track record of satisfied customers is a far more meaningful indicator of competence than a “license.”
October 16th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
mike,
Over-regulation is no argument for under-regulation.
Brilliant. Back at ya: Under-regulation is no argument for over-regulation.
If they dont have those things, and the regulations were well written, youd know they would have to have those things to actually have that license.
Then your “license” simply represents a certain level of performance in the marketplace, rather than an “objective” test of “competence.” So why should it be required at all? As Bujold said, consumers should be able to choose to hire a lower-rated plumber for a lower price if they so desire rather than being subject to an arbitrary standard of market rating imposed by the government.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
To save money, I typically hire unlicensed repairmen for my business. It saves a lot of money. The quality has been fine.
(I hire foreigners. Why, I don’t quite know. I do think they are more motivated to do better work) .
October 16th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Is anyone really arguing that In Real Life there’s a shortage of plumbers, so that the licensed pros are effectively a cartel? That the free-lancers have problems getting work? That it’s difficult to find an unlicensed plumber who will do it cheaper than a union guy?
I think the pendulum has a loooooong way to swing away from union-busting and toward more-organized labor before anything like balance is achieved. Ever since Reagan busted PATCO’s chops working people have gotten the bill and the leftovers, while the managerial and knowledge-worker employees got the benefits.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Before I was an attorney, I was a general building contract. I was one of the few women qualified to take the exam in California in the 1970s and became a building contractor based on merit, as opposed to being “granfathered in” by being on the license of a husband/brother/father. So, my comment to you is this (in jest):
FORGET LICENSING, DON’T BOTHER WITH LICENSED PHYSICIANS, PHARMACISTS (they only count pills anyway, hell, I can count), CPAs, DENTISTS (my foreman pulled his own teeth, on the job, when he had a toothache), etc. …..
OH, I HAD A CLIENT WHO THOUGHT IT WAS NOT NECESSARY TO HIRE A LICENSED ELECTRICIAN, THEIR NEW HOME BURNED TO THE GROUND BECAUSE OF SHORT AND THE INSURANCE COMPANY DID NOT PAY UP BECAUSE THE WORK WAS NOT PERFORMED BY SOMEONE WHO DEMONSTRATED MINIMAL STANDARDS OF COMPETENCE.
Some people are just too smart by half.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
I guess he didn’t vet his plumber any better than his vice-presidential candidate.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Brilliant. Back at ya: Under-regulation is no argument for over-regulation.
It is an argument for some regulation. What is appropriate to debate is how much, but none is a bit hard for me to swallow.
Then your “license” simply represents a certain level of performance in the marketplace, rather than an “objective” test of “competence.” So why should it be required at all? As Bujold said, consumers should be able to choose to hire a lower-rated plumber for a lower price if they so desire rather than being subject to an arbitrary standard of market rating imposed by the government.
Marketplaces like this are where the PROMISE of future labor is purchased. The actual quality that will be delivered quality is difficult if not impossible for the average person to assess, which means they have to rely upon recommendations and what past history they can dig up. And if plumbers are unregulated, by definition there are no standard means of reporting their labor or tracking them, putting the consumer at a massive disadvantage.
Licensing allows you to set standards of practice, track the career history, and bar unfit practitioners. How you do those things is important, but that it is in the consumer interest to have a system to do that is clear. It CAN be used to create an artificial shortage, or lock in business, but again, that is the case of excessive regulation for the benefit of one trade. An argument against some of, but not all of, siad regulation.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
You’re right about the “jest” part. Your comment is a reductio-ad-absurdum joke. One might reasonably believe that licensing plumbers is unnecessary, and even counterproductive, without also believing the same thing regarding highly-skilled, knowledge-intensive, safety-critical professions like medicine, you know.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I don’t need a license to pull facts from my ass. I just need an ass, and boy do I have one.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
One problem with entry barriers like occupational licensing is that they promote a “supply-push” model of distribution.
The higher the cost–in licensing fees, educational requirements, or capitalization–of market entry, the greater the pressure for push distribution.
Conversely, the alternative social economy of household and informal production can operate with potentially very low overhead costs, because much of it relies on “spare cycles,” or excess capacity of capital goods we already own (e.g. the desktop computer, which has become a basic item of capital equipment enabling a quality of output in publishing, sound editing, and software design rivalling that of the old corporate dinosaurs). Same for the family who farm mainly to supply most of their own food, but exchange the surplus for the neighbor’s surplus homebrewed beer or some honey from his beehive.
And even when capital goods are specifically acquired to produce for sale, the natural state of affairs would be low capital outlays. If I wanted to run a brewpub or restaurant out of my home, all I’d have to spend money on would be a brewing vat and some small fermenters, and remodelling a room and putting a few tables in it. That could be done with a small bank loan of a few thousand $$ at most, the principal and interest on which could be serviced by a few customers a month. My main capital outlay would be my house itself, including my kitchen, which I have to have anyway. So most of my income would be free and clear, with very little overhead. That means that I could supplement my wage income and gradually shift to self-employment bit by bit, with almost zero cost and risk. And since I was producing for a “long tail” market, I could tailor my offerings to my customers’ tastes, and produce in response to demand instead of trying to manufacture demand.
In an economy where that was possible for everyone, the pressure to work for a wage would be far less.
OTOH, the main function of licensing and regulations is to
artificially raise overhead, and criminalize production using spare capacity. I couldn’t just put a few tables in a spare room and run a restaurant with my regular kitchen range. Local “health” regulations would specifiy a specific kind of expensive, industrial-capacity stove and dishwasher, refrigerator, etc., not to mention a liquor license. And the large capital outlays required for this would mean that the only way to cover overhead costs would be to operate on a scale that required hiring kitchen staff and keeping the place as full as possible all the time. Which is exactly why most new restaurants go Chapter Eleven.
A lady in my town operated a senior daycare center out of her home, charging a modest price to care for two or three old people at a time. No reason it wouldn’t be cheap. The cost of a decent hourly wage spread over two or three customers, plus meals–and that’s all, because she’s running it out of her house, which she has anyway. The families of the old people, who had alzheimer’s disease, considered it a lifesaver. But she was shut down on a complaint from–guess who?–the administrator of a state-licensed nursing home.
Licensing, in too many cases, is a tool for enforcing what Ivan Illich called “radical monopoly,” raising the costs of comfortable subsistence and making people artificially dependent on wage labor.
At the very least, occupational licensing should be reformed so that 1) there is no attempt to limit the number of practitioners based on anyone’s perception of what the market can support, and 2) licensing fees are limited to the actual cost of administering the system. For example, in the case of taxicab medallions, the actual cost of a background check and driving record would proably be under $100. Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of $$ required for a medallion. Vin Suprynowicz pointed out that George Washington became a surveyor through apprenticeship, with a rather meager formal education. Today, in contrast, a college education costing upwards of $100,000 is required to enter the market.
In plumbing in particular, I’d like to see a free market licensing system, with some sort of guild providing a certification of competency to those who met its standards of apprenticeship. Of course, the competing guilds would be the main actors in the market for consumer information: a reputation for quality alumni would be a marketable good in its own right for the guilds, competition among plumbers would include advertising the guild they apprenticed with, and building contractors might advertise that they only used plumbers certified by some particular guild with a reputation for excellence.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
matt, while not a starburst post, you probably should have thought this through a little more. i know it’s a blog, but clearly your readers appreciate fleshed out positions.
unless you intended a 100 post flame war thread on licensing. then kudos.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
In California, in order to QUALIFY TO SIT FOR THE EXAM, one must
1. Work in that trade in a supervisory position for four year
2. Pass the trade portion for the exam
3. Pass the law-accounting portion of the exam
4. Prove moral character and financial stability in case there is a claim, the contractor has the financial ability to back up the work
HAVE PEOPLE LEARNED NOTHING FROM THE WALL STREET MELTDOWN? When people run amok, thumbing their collective noses to regulation, chaos follows.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that there is no such thing as unskilled labor. Even something as “simple” as pouring a concrete slab is something that takes a huge amount of time and experience to master.
Plumbing is tough. Electric is tough. HVAC is tough. Framing, masonry, trim, fire systems, structured cabling, elevator repair — there’s nothing unskilled about any of it.
Any idiot — even me! — can do a half-ass job working out of a glossy-page repair guide; that same idiot can do a passable job after four or five bites at the apple; but it takes experienced and educated professionals to handle all the inconsistencies and problems that crop up on any particular job. And that’s not even taking code compliance into consideration.
Now, there are plenty of occupations that I think don’t need licensing (software dev being one example), but anything dealing directly and specifically with health and safety — making sure that pesticide-tainted water isn’t sucked back to your kitchen tap by vacuum draw, for example — is too important to leave up to amateurs. Permits, inspections, vendor licensing, red tags, compliance and all the rest of the municipal code infrastructure can be a pain, sure, but it’s a damn sight better than letting amateurs churn out Home Depot versions of Brazilian favelas.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
mike,
It is an argument for some regulation.
Then over-regulation is an argument for some deregulation. Like, say, deregulation of plumbers.
Marketplaces like this are where the PROMISE of future labor is purchased.
Huh? The market in question is the market for plumbing services, not a “promise.”
The actual quality that will be delivered quality is difficult if not impossible for the average person to assess, which means they have to rely upon recommendations and what past history they can dig up. And if plumbers are unregulated, by definition there are no standard means of reporting their labor or tracking them, putting the consumer at a massive disadvantage.
Plumbers obviously do not need to be licensed in order for their performance to be tracked by organizations like the Better Business Bureau and private consumer watchdogs. There are lots of consumer groups, many accessible on the web, that collect this kind of information and make it available to prospective customers.
Licensing allows you to set standards of practice, track the career history, and bar unfit practitioners.
Again, why shouldn’t consumers be allowed to decide for themselves the “standard of practise” and “fitness” of their plumbers rather than being subject to an arbitrary standard imposed on them by the government? If I think Joe the Plumber is offering an adequate standard of service at a good price, why shouldn’t I be allowed to hire him to repair my leaky faucet?
October 17th, 2008 at 12:13 am
So. . . .
Did it turn out that Joe the Plumber was even a plumber at all? Or was he just a plant?
October 17th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Upset about licensing plumbers? How about lawyers and doctors?
October 17th, 2008 at 12:16 am
twb,
Now, there are plenty of occupations that I think don’t need licensing (software dev being one example), but anything dealing directly and specifically with health and safety — making sure that pesticide-tainted water isn’t sucked back to your kitchen tap by vacuum draw, for example — is too important to leave up to amateurs.
Your position makes no sense. Computer software can obviously “deal directly and specifically with health and safety.” Everything from software to control nuclear power plants to software that queries a database for medical records. And are you now proposing to require homeowners (and any third party) to be licensed to do any plumbing work on their own home–even merely installing a faucet–on the grounds that allowing “amateurs” to do the work poses a risk to “health and safety?”
It’s absurd. In case you’re not aware of this, there are millions of “amateurs” with no training at all in plumbing, electrical work, construction, etc. doing all sorts of home projects that involve risks to health and safety, from electrocution, to flooding, to “tainted” drinking water, to physical injury. Good luck trying to “license” that.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Kevin Carson gets it exactly right.
I would like to add that there ought to be some regulation, but let it be fundamental regulation, like ensuring all business has the necessary insurance. Then that argument for licensing would fall away. Any bad work would be a matter between the customer and the business that has done poor work (and its insurance company).
Licensing is way to often used to create cartels, and who in their right mind would want that, even in the name of the greater good.
Licensing in the building trades should only be necessary in very specific cases, and then not extended to entire trades, but only the parts of the trades that are essential. In essence, licensing should be about outsourcing essential building inspection, that it would be inefficient to have public bodies perform, to a selfinspection regime. Furthermore licenses should not be limited in number, be awarded by objective criteria and only cost as much as the actual cost of issuing the licenses (exams, etc.).
I think you will find that most licensing schemes do not meet these criteria. They are cartels and rackets that do nothing more than gurantee extra income to the license holders.
/Limagolf
October 17th, 2008 at 6:00 am
My issues is, to become a lawyer I had to attend law school, which was ridiculously expensive (even at my small public school). Then I had to take the bar exam which was itself expensive, essentially required some expensive prep classes, and pretty much required that I not work for a whole summer (thus loans for living expenses). Now that I *am* a lawyer, I have to pay yearly fees to be licensed and pay for continuing education classes which, frankly, almost never produce anything other than a room full of attorneys checking their blackberries for several hours.
There’s got to be a way to streamline that system that would still ensure that people are able to get competent counsel.
October 17th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Historically, states without regulation always have _ENORMOUS_ amounts of tort litigation. This is why there are so many wealthy Southern plaintiffs’ lawyers. Thus, the libertarian attacks on regulation only lead to a far less efficient and inequitable system of winner-take-all governance by lawsuit.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:38 am
This does run both ways. Massachusetts is currently trying to make people who do low-voltage electric work (installing high-end stereos, computer networks, home automation systems, etc.) have electrician licenses. And they want for anyone currently an electrician’s union to be able to get a low voltage license without even having to sit the exam. This is just job protection and ugly.
On the other hand, while licensing may keep people from entering a field, there is a public infrastructure being protected. Electrical fires can spread onto other people’s property. Plumbing errors can waste huge amounts of water and/or poison drinking water and/or cause flooding.
Being able to de-license someone is a real threat and is the only way building codes can truly be enforced.
That the system gets gamed by the people is serves is a problem, but the system itself is needed.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I’ve been hoping for a surprise announcement that Joe the Plumber will be McCain’s new VP. It’s become painfully obvious that there are no licensing or quality standards for that job.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:50 am
QUALIFICATION FOR ADMISSION TO PRACTICE LAW IN CALIFORNIA THROUGH STUDY IN A LAW OFFICE OR JUDGE’S CHAMBERS
In state of California at least, people always have a chance of become a lawyer by apprenticeship track. If your state does not allow this, feel free to lobby them to adopt the California model.
I also echo others that the possibility to be disbarred is a very useful by itself. As a California county law librarian, I love this disbarment precedent.
October 17th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
ronathan writes:
If you suck at plumbing, you won’t get hired. If you’re a good plumber but you charge too much, you won’t get hired either.
Since this logic is so incompatible with the current tenancy of the White House, it confused me until I realized there was a loophole:
If you suck at governing AND charge too much, you’ll get rehired in a heartbeat!
October 17th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Careful what you say about building codes, those will be the next target.
Seriously though, an earlier poster suggested that you watch Holmes on Homes if you would like to see the incredible damage that incompetent and unscrupulous “contractors” can cause. I would suggest before you hire anyone to work on your condo, that you watch ten of the hour long episodes of this show ,and then decide which type of contractor you would like to have working on the place where you live.And have your money invested.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Haven’t any of your posters ever heard of Milton Friedman or the argument against occupational licensing? It is an ancient and successful racket — it’s the use of the state/government by special interests to protect their own wallets while pretending to be interested only in safety, quality, reliability, etc. Here’s something i wrote last year
The public-private job licensure racket
By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Want to become an accountant, architect, barber, chiropractor, cosmetologist, dental hygienist, dentist, paramedic, funeral director, hearing aid fitter, insurance agent, land surveyor, lawyer, nursing home administrator, nurse, occupational therapist, optometrist, pesticide applicator, pharmacist, physical therapist, physician assistant, physician, podiatrist, psychologist, public school teacher, real estate agent, real estate appraiser, school counselor, stock broker, social worker, truck driver, veterinarian or vet’s assistant?
Well, hold on. Before you can work one of these choice jobs you first must get the permission of your government. In America, land of the free.
Every job above is a licensed occupation in all 50 states. That means before you can work in one, you have to pay whatever fees, pass whatever tests and meet whatever training, education or apprenticeship requirements your home state’s professional and occupational licensing boards and commissions demand — no matter how arbitrary, absurd or onerous they are.
Unfortunately, these 33 categories don’t begin to show how widespread job regulation is. According to a new study by the Reason Foundation, more than 1,000 occupations are regulated to some degree by states and about 20 percent of the country’s work force must obtain a license to work (up from 4.5 percent in the 1950s).
The average state licenses 92 job categories, says study author Adam Summers. California leads with 177 — including talent agents and librarians. Missouri has the least — 41 — while Pennsylvania is remarkably low with 62. Among the most idiotic examples are Maryland (fortune tellers), Louisiana (florists) and Arizona (rainmakers).
Propagandists of regulated occupations and state governments both insist, as Pennsylvania does, that job licenses are necessary to protect “the health, safety and welfare of the public from fraudulent and unethical practitioners.”
Studies don’t prove that, Summers says. And most economists — including Milton Friedman, who believed “licensure should be eliminated as a requirement for the practice of medicine” — see the scam behind the Nanny State smoke.
They know that occupational licensing — almost always a result of political lobbying by the very profession being licensed — is a sneaky way to use government power to protect the economic interests of incumbent doctors, lawyers and pesticide applicators.
By making it harder and more expensive for new doctors, lawyers and pesticide applicators to enter the market, competition and the number of practitioners in each field are held down and salaries, prices and profits are propped up.
Consumers get robbed every day by this public-private racket. So do those who’d like to become dietitians or auctioneers but can’t afford the time or money for training or certification requirements. So does society, which gets less economic growth and innovation.
It’s maddening. Because of occupational licensing, today Abe Lincoln couldn’t practice law, Florence Nightingale couldn’t be a nurse and Albert Einstein couldn’t teach physics in a public school in America.
But don’t despair. Our freedom to work isn’t totally lost. Except for in Iowa, where you need a license, any American can still grow up and become a manure applicator without getting the government’s permission.
Bill Steigerwald can be reached at bsteigerwald@tribweb.com or 412-320-7983.
Images and text copyright © 2008 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co.
Reproduction or reuse prohibited without written consent from PghTrib.com
October 17th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Here’s another way of looking at it. A contractor’s license is fairly easy to get and cheap. If a person is unwilling or unable to meet what are pretty rudimentary standards, why should they be allowed to hang a shingle out there? Why would you want to patronize a person who has demonstrated so little commitment to their craft? It’s not like my wife who had to spend thousands of internship hours before she could test to be a shrink. It’s easy.
October 17th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
It seems like there are a few questions here, some of which are straightforwardly empirical questions, while others are a bit stickier.
The empirical questions are a) whether or not licensing schemes for a given profession have an overall tendency to improve the baseline quality of service in that profession, and b) whether the licensing schemes have an overall tendency to increase the cost for those services.
If the licensing improves quality and increases the cost, then there is a further substantive question of whether such a trade-off is acceptable.
If the licensing improves quality and does not increase the cost, then it seems relatively less controversial whether the licensing scheme would be acceptable (though there is still room for disagreement).
If the licensing increases the costs, but doesn’t improve the quality, then it seems pretty clear that the licensing schemes are not acceptable.
If it has no impact on costs or quality, then it also seems pretty clear that it would be unacceptable.
Matt’s post indicates that he thinks licensing plumbers increases costs but does not (positively) impact quality.
What I am not clear on is Matt’s basis for doubting that there is a positive impact on quality. Since there are fairly straightforward reasons for thinking that even a relatively minimal test/licensing barrier would exclude people who in-fact know absolutely nothing about plumbing, but who think that they know quite a bit about it from going into business as plumbers, we have prima facie good reason for suspecting that there will be an overall positive impact on the quality of plumbing services.
While it is possible that the forces of a free market would take care of the know-nothing plumbers, it does so through a process which involves a) the plumber going out of business, and b) a fair number of people receiving poor service from that plumber before he goes out of business. (Because of this, one might be inclined to think that if licensing gets us to the same place in terms of service and cost as an open market would, but avoids the situation where a lot of people are unhappy with their plumbing, and other people tried to make it as plumbers and failed miserably, that would be a reason to institute licensing even with no real impact on the long-term costs of plumbing or the long term quality of plumbing services.)
October 17th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Mixner is right. I believe plumbing licenses are not required for residential plumbing work in Ohio.
I find it disturbing how some people (not this site) are trying to tear down Joe W. It’s not like he went to an Obama rally as a troublemaker. Obama stopped at his house when he saw him playing football in his yard with his son. Apparently, he doesn’t make $250 grand but thinks it’s a disincentive to have “tax the rich” policies. That’s a legitimate viewpoint and no reason for the media to try and dig up dirt on him.
October 18th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Matt.
Better stick to “the big issues” as you are way out of it on this one.
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